The president of the American Association of University Professors examines the year's activities and asserts that one of the association's most important contributions has been helping to raise the alarm about the serious impact of contingent academic labor on higher education. (EV)

Asserts that part-time faculty cannot enjoy as full a protection for academic freedom as do full-time faculty, let alone faculty with tenure, because they are too removed from the system of peer review. Clarifies the nuances of difference in the academic freedom available to part-time faculty and suggests procedures for its protection. (EV)

Explores the conditions that have given rise to the current reliance on non-tenure-track employment and how the attempts to deal with these conditions on an ad hoc basis has resulted in a broad spectrum of temporary and part-time situations. (PRA)

Describes staffing of United States four-year college English departments. Notes the multitiered structure of professorial rank that has formed as a result of 20 years of increasing enrollment, and static or decreasing levels funding. Concludes that four-year English institutions are limited in their capacity to staff the full range of their…

Discusses the need to distinguish between the person filling the position and the position itself in examining all the issues and concerns surrounding the employment of non-tenure-line faculty, lecturers, instructors, and adjuncts. Concludes that educators must focus efforts upon the entire body of non-tenure-line faculty, striving to create…

A survey of 229 part-time nursing faculty members indicated that they generally like their work and gain a feeling of achievement from it. However, they dislike the frequent lack of job benefits and the perceived inequity between part-time and full-time salaries. (CH)

Used a series of national data sets to ascertain the current status of tenure in U.S. higher education. Found that non-tenure-track and part-time faculty are likely to comprise an increasingly significant portion of the academic faculty in the United States during the coming years; however, the populations of tenured faculty across institutional…

Citing a decreased proportion of full-time tenured faculty at American colleges and steady increase of part-time adjunct and other nontenure-track faculty, this American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) document advocates professionalism of the manner in which part-time/adjunct faculty are employed, compensated, supported and treated in higher…

Many colleges and universities use "adjunct faculty" as a means to address increasingly unpredictable student populations, questionable funding formulas, and tightened education budgets. Initial evidence suggests, however, that the practice of using them contains flaws. This research was conducted to determine existing circumstances of adjunct…

Women faculty will continue to lag behind males in achieving tenure as long as the ideal academic is defined as someone who takes no time off for childbearing. Suggests that the solution is to redefine the ideal worker in academia by offering proportional pay, benefits, and advancement for part-time work. Presents a model half-time tenure track…

Three critics comment on M. Elizabeth Wallace's October l984 "College English" article, "The Richness of Language and the Poverty of Part-Timers: Impact and Invisibility," and Wallace responds. (EL)

This report responds to a resolution from the Illinois General Assembly directing the State Board of Higher Education to study issues affecting the use and compensation of nontenure-track faculty. Surveys of teaching faculty and key administrators were conducted, and public institutions provided data on the numbers, workload, and salaries of all…

Although the 1980s period of belt-tightening in higher education meant layoff of many tenured professors, financially troubled colleges are trimming part-time and nontenured faculty jobs and offering encouraging early retirement in the current period of retrenchment. However, the proportion of tenured faculty has shrunk as the overall size of the…

Over the last generation, the instructional staffing system in American higher education has experienced a significant reduction in the proportion of jobs for full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members and a dramatic growth in fixed-term full- and part-time instructional jobs without tenure. About 70 percent of the people teaching in…

Over the last sixteen years, part-time teachers have become the coolies, or the burden bearers of the academic community. Used mostly to teach lower-level basic classes, they have increased in number from 36,420 in l968 to 330,000 in l985. Research about part timers began in the late l970s with Howard Tuckman, who tried to find systematic and…